![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Hobbes and Rousseau relied heavily upon the time-worn metaphor of the body politic to describe and explain their respective political visions. But while Rousseau’s use of the metaphor is largely accepted by scholars as a congruous and illuminating extension of his political thought, Hobbes’s use of it is regarded as an instance of mere rhetoric, which is philosophically incompatible with his broader mechanistic voluntarism. This article questions the interpretive double-standard applied to Hobbes’s and Rousseau’s work and shows how their iterations of the body motif are remarkably similar in aesthetic structure, in rhetorical intent, and in the performative role they play within Hobbes’s and Rousseau’s political design. Certain features of Hobbes’s thought that scholars have judged to be incompatible with his body metaphor—such as voluntarist contract and the rival metaphor of the machine—were also employed by Rousseau, and are easily reconciled. The body metaphor was enormously important to both Hobbes and Rousseau for its rhetorical ability to exhort against factionalism, enjoin organic cohesion, and emphasize the existential indispensability of political sovereignty. These parallels suggest that their political aims are comparable, and that Hobbes’s reputation as a mechanistic voluntarist deserves review.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, chap. 5; Christine de Pizan, Book of the Body Politic.
2 See Plato, Republic 2.368d–69a, 4.434d–e; Aristotle, Politics 1254a, 1281b, 1290b; Cicero, Offices 3.v–vi.
3 For brief synopses of this historical development, see Pitkin, Concept of Representation, 246–52; Hale, Body Politic, 108–30.
4 For a sample of representative works in this vein, see Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, 29–30; Gierke,Community in Historical Perspective, 159–62; Tönnies, Community and Civil Society; Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, 12–18.
5 For an alternative assessment of modern society, see Durkheim, Division of Labor in Society.
6 See Riley, “Rousseau’s General Will,” 124–53.
7 See Oakeshott, Hobbes on Civil Association, 62: “Hobbes’s individualism is far too strong to allow even the briefest appearance of anything like a general will.”
8 See Tönnies, Ferdinand Toennies on Sociology, 60–61.
9 Bernardi and Bensaude-Vincent, “Presence of Sciences in Rousseau’s Trajectory,” 70. See also Cohen, Rousseau, 33, 64.
10 Gierke, Development of Political Theory, 175–76. See also Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 61, 84, 136.
11 Gierke applauded Tönnies’s 1912 work on Hobbes (Thomas Hobbes der Mann und der Denker): see Gierke, Natural Law, 232 note 18.
12 See Stephen, Hobbes; Gierke, Natural Law, lxiv–lxvi, lxxiv–lxxiv.
13 See Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 2, 157; Oakeshott, Hobbes on Civil Association, 60–62; Macpherson, Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 1–3, 60–61, 86–87, 93–95.
14 See Plato, Republic, 372e, 444d; Aristotle, The Politics, 1254a25–b30, 1255b5–15, 1260a1–30, 1277a5–12, 1291a24–27.
15 Cicero, De Officiis, 1.25. See also De Inventione, 2.56 for “corpus civitatis,” the body of the city.
16 Plato, Republic, 369b–c.
17 Aristotle, The Politics, 1252a24.
18 See Ibid., 1252b15–39, 1278b15–29; Cicero, De Re Publica, 1.26.39.
19 Aristotle, The Politics, 1253a1.
20 Ibid., 1252a17, 1290b21.
21 Ibid., 1255b9, 1261a22, 1277a5; See also Plato, Republic, 462d: “What about the city that is most like a single person? For example, when one of us hurts his finger, the entire organism that binds body and soul together into a single system under the ruling part within it is aware of this, and the whole feels the pain together with the part that suffers. That’s why we say that the man has a pain in his finger. And the same can be said about any part of a man, with regard either to the pain it suffers or to the pleasure it experiences when it finds relief. … The city with the best government is most like such a person.”
22 Plato, Republic, 444a–e, 445d; Aristotle, The Politics, 1252a24–1252b14, 1253b1–1254b40, 1260a1, 1277a5, 1291a22. Less frequently, hierarchy in nature would be demonstrated through musical principles, as in the harmonization of “lowest, highest, and middle notes.” See Plato, Republic, 443d; Aristotle, The Politics, 1254a28.
23 Aristotle, Politics, 1253a15.
24 Ibid., 1253a30.
25 For the tropes of health and sickness, see Plato, Republic, 372e, 444c–45, 583–84.
26 For the cave analogy, see Plato, Republic, 514–17. For the implausibility of reform and proposal for children, see 496 and 540–41.
27 See ibid., 386a, 389b, 414c–415.
28 Cicero, De Inventione, 1.2.
29 See Cicero, De Officiis, 1.16.50; Cicero, De Re Publica, 1.25.40: “In a short time a scattered and wandering multitude had become a body of citizens by mutual agreement (concordia civitas facta erat).”
30 Cicero, De Officiis, 3.5–6.
31 Augustine, City of God, vol. 4, 12.22. Note the similarity to Plato’s noble lie. Cf. Genesis 2:22–24.
32 Augustine, City of God, vol. 4, 12.23; see also ibid., 14.1.
33 See Augustine, City of God, vol. 1, 5.9; and vol. 4, 11.17, 14.13, 19.12: “For no creature’s vice is so completely at odds with nature that it destroys the very last traces of nature.”
34 Augustine, City of God, vol. 4, 13.3, 14.12.
35 Ibid., vol. 1, 2.21. He appropriated Cicero’s own analogy of the republic as a painting, whose colors fade over time if not carefully preserved, cf. Cicero, De Re Publica, 5.1.
36 Augustine, City of God, vol. 6, 19.23–25.
37 Ibid., 19.21; Cf. Cicero, De Re Publica, 1.25: “A people is not any collection of human beings brought together in any sort of way, but an assemblage of people in large numbers associated in an agreement with respect to justice and a partnership for the common good.”
38 See Augustine, City of God, vol. 6, 1.30, 3.25, 19.7, 12.
39 Ibid.,19.21; see also 19.23.
40 Ibid., vol. 6, 22.24, and also 19.13; and vol. 3, 10.6.
41 Ibid., vol. 4, 15.3; vol. 7, 22.30.
42 Romans 12:4ff, I Corinthians 12:16 (New King James Version)
43 I Corinthians 12:14, 19, 21.
44 Romans 12:3, 9–10; I Corinthians 12:21–26; Ephesians 4:1–5; Colossians 2:8, 18–19, 3:11–15.
45 Augustine explicitly approved of their mentality, see City of God, vol. 6, 19.5. And for similar appeals to the authority of the ancients on this matter, see Salisbury, Policraticus, 5.1–2, 6.21; Aquinas, On Kingship, to the King of Cyprus, 1.1, 2.3.
46 See Romans 1:18–2:29, 3:9–23, 6:3–8:23; Galatians 5:16–24; Ephesians 2:1–10; Colossians 2:10–14, 3:1–11; and Augustine, City of God, vol. 4, 14.1–4, 11–13, 15, 20, 23–24; 15.5–7, 12; vol. 6, 19.15.
47 Augustine, City of God, vol. 4, 14.11 (emphasis added). See also vol. 7, 21.8: “No difficulty will detain him, no law of nature circumscribe him.”
48 “Civitatem Dei, cuius rex est et conditor Christus,” see Augustine, City of God, vol. 5, 17.4.
49 “Regeneration” is another theological term for this transformation: see Augustine, City of God, vol. 4, 15.1; see also II Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 6:15.
50 Augustine, City of God, vol. 4, 13.23. See also vol. 3, 10.6; 17.4, 9, 20; and City of God, vol. 7, 22.18, where Augustine quotes Paul extensively: “Here is described the perfect man (vir perfectus)—the Head and the body which consists of all the members whose number will be made up at the proper time.”
51 See Augustine, On Christian Combat, chap. 20.
52 Colossians 2:19, see also I Corinthians 12:12–13, 27, Ephesians 4:4–6, 15–16, 5:29–30, Colossians 3:15.
53 Plato, Republic, 514a–5520, 473d, see also 463b for Plato’s description of the philosophers as “saviors” (in Greek, soteres, the word used for Christ). Perhaps it is no coincidence that Plato’s thought was often considered especially compatible with Christianity, philosophically and rhetorically.
54 Ibid., 445e, 500c–d, 506a–b, 508b–9.
55 Cicero, De Re Publica, 1.25, “res populi.”
56 Cicero, De Officiis, 3.6, “a communi tamquam humanitatis corpore.” See also 1.25.
57 Augustine, City of God, vol. 5,17.20, “Christo et possessione eius ecclesia.”
58 Romans 3:21–23, Galatians 3:28. See also Romans 3:9, Galatians 2:6, and Colossians 3:11–15.
59 Salisbury, Policraticus, 5.1, 6.25.
60 Aquinas, On Kingship, 1.1–2, 2.1–3; see also Collected Works, 3.81.
61 James I, “Speech to the Lords and Commons,” 307–8.
62 Hale, Body Politic, 127, see also 130, where he claims that Hobbes tried to “put an end to sustained or serious use of organic imagery in political discussion.”
63 This angle is a relatively recent phenomenon in the secondary literature, and it tends to claim that Hobbes intentionally used his body metaphor to conceal, undermine, or subvert his transparently-stated aims: to urge closer identification between sovereign and citizens, and to emphasize the sovereign’s existential indispensability vis-à-vis the commonwealth. Without addressing the complex rationale of this claim (which deserves its own essay), this article assumes and demonstrates that Hobbes and Rousseau used their rhetorical metaphors in the traditional manner, to illuminate and describe their rational premises rather than undermine or contradict them. For examples of the latter argument, see Garsten, “Religion and Representation in Hobbes,” 539–41; Abizadeh, “Representation of Hobbesian Sovereignty,” 49; Hequembourg, “Hobbes’s Leviathan: A Tale of Two Bodies,” 21–36; Kahn, The Future of Illusion, 37. For a recent article that assumes the opposite, see Smith, “Democracy and the Body Politic,” 167–96.
64 Pitkin, “Comment on Orwin,” 45 (emphasis added). For another example of this general mentality, see Vieira, Elements of Representation in Hobbes.
65 See Plato, Republic, 4.441c–445e, 5.473d–e; Aristotle, The Politics, 1.ii–vii, 1.xii–xiii, 3.iv; Salisbury, Policraticus, 4.1, V.2,9, 6.21; Aquinas, On Kingship, bk. 1, chap. 1.
66 For a modern iteration, see Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, esp. 24–27, 30–34, 160–61, 193–95, 227–29.
67 Hobbes, Leviathan, 20. See also De Corpore Politico, 23; De Cive, 9.
68 Filmer, “Observations Concerning the Original of Government,” 239.
69 See notes 5–7 above.
70 For a sampling, see Hobbes, Human Nature, 19.5; De Cive, 5.5; Leviathan, Introduction.17.2, 24.13; Rousseau: Social Contract, 1.1.2, 3.1.21; Discourse on Political Economy, par. 3; Principles of the Right of War, pars. 24–26, 29, 32, 51.
71 Gierke claims that medieval and Catholic Natural Law theorists virtually invented the notion of modern consent, see Gierke, Political Theory, 91–42. Marsilius of Padua emphasized consent as the litmus for legitimate rule, and he explicitly appealed to Aristotle for this principle in The Defender of the Peace, 1.8.3, 1.9.2, 5–9.
72 See Erasmus, Education of a Christian Prince,17, 39, 43, 89, 105.
73 Hobbes, Leviathan, 13.
74 See Aristotle, The Politics, 1.2.1253a7–9; Aristotle, “History of Animals,” 1.1.488a8–10; Cicero, De Officiis, 1.44.157; Salisbury, Policraticus, 5.21.
75 Hobbes, Leviathan, 17.6–12. See also Human Nature, 19.5; De Cive, 5.5.
76 Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality, 2.57; see also 2.18.
77 Rousseau, Social Contract, pars. 2–5; see also 1.4.8.
78 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1.34; Rousseau, Right of War, pars. 5, 17.
79 The “war of all against all” seems provoked primarily by the collision of humans pursuing their self-preservation within an environment of relative scarcity. But Hobbes describes a certain subset of humans—the “vainglorious”—whose aggression cannot be justified on these grounds, and who perhaps deserve some degree of moral disapprobation. See Leviathan, 6.39, 41, 8.18, 11.11–12, 15.19, 27.13–17, 42.25.
80 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1.34–38.
81 See ibid., 1.20–21.
82 Ibid., 1.14–16.
83 Aristotle, Politics, 1252b32.
84 Hobbes, De Corpore, 6.11; Hobbes, De Homine, 10.2; Hobbes, De Cive, 16.2, 18.2; Hobbes, Leviathan, 4.1–2, 34.25, 35.3, 38.2–3, 44.14, 25, 27–28.
85 Hobbes, Leviathan, 38.15.
86 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1.16 [note 9.2].
87 Hobbes, Leviathan, 13.3–4, 14.4, .17; Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1.14–18, 2.29–32.
88 Hobbes, De Cive, Letter Dedicatory.
89 Hobbes, Preface.
90 Hobbes, Leviathan, 13.9; see also De Cive, 1.12–13.
91 Hobbes, Leviathan, 3.31; see also 1.12–13, 15.38–40, 26.13.
92 Hobbes, Leviathan, 18.20; see also 20.18.
93 Hobbes, De Cive, Letter Dedicatory.
94 Hobbes, Leviathan, 30.3.
95 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 2.29–30.
96 To claim that Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero (especially in Inventione) did not fully understand human dysfunction seems unfair to them. It seems even more absurd to claim this of Augustine, John of Salisbury, Aquinas, John of Paris, or Marsilius of Padua (who all persisted in affirming the natural sociality of humans).
97 Macpherson, Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 9–106, 265, 268–70.
98 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 2.1, 6, 11, 17, 19, 22–9, 35–42; Rousseau, Political Economy, pars. 34–5, 43–44; Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.4.8, 8.2, 9 (entire); Rousseau, Right of War, pars. 9, 16, 27.
99 See Hale, Body Politic, 108–37.
100 Hobbes, De Corpore Politico, 20.1; see also Leviathan, 13.13–14.
101 Hobbes, De Cive, from the Preface; see also the Letter Dedicatory for the “absolute necessity” of the contract.
102 Hobbes, Leviathan, 11.9; see also 1.12–3, 15.35, 38, 40, 17.1, 26.13; and De Cive, 2.3.
103 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 2.50; see also 2.34; Social Contract, 1.6.1–2.
104 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 2.32.
105 For an excellent description of this mentality versus the alternative, see Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, 136, 138–40, 151.
106 See Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.7.3.
107 Chapter heading XIX from Human Nature.
108 Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.1.1.
109 Rousseau, 1.6.8–9; see also 2.6.1.
110 See Hobbes, Human Nature, 19.4, 6; De Corpore Politico, 21.11, 227.7; De Cive, 5.4, 6; Leviathan, 17.2–5.
111 Hobbes, Leviathan, 17.13; see also De Corpore Politico, 20.2–3; De Cive, 6 (note).
112 Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction.1; see also De Corpore Politico, 20.1.
113 Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.6.1; see also 3.16.7.
114 Hobbes, Leviathan, 14.2 note 7, 18, 31, 17.6ff., 21.6, and 17.2.
115 Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.7.8; see also Political Economy, pars. 20–21, 24, 27–28.
116 For statements in support of paternalist political power, see Rousseau, Political Economy, pars. 6, 37.
117 Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.3, 5; Political Economy, par. 22 and see also par. 31.
118 Rousseau, Political Economy, par. 36, see also pars. 24, 29.
119 Hobbes, Leviathan, 30.4.
120 For an interpretation that acknowledges this, see Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 182–84: “The acumen of Hobbes shows itself at its best in his understanding that the contractual symbolism which he uses, in accordance with the conventions of the seventeenth century, is not the essence of the matter. The combining into a commonwealth under a sovereign may express itself in legal form, but essentially it is a psychological transformation of the combining persons.” See also Maitland, State, Trust, and Corporation, 35.
121 Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction.1.
122 Gierke, Natural Law, 52, 61, 136.
123 See Hobbes, De Cive, 5.10, “corpus sodalitatis,” and also 6.19 and 12.1.
124 Hobbes, Leviathan, 23.1; see also the entirety of 22 and 23, and 24.1, 11, 13–14.
125 Ibid., 29; see also Hobbes, De Corpore Politico, 27; and De Cive, 12.1.
126 Hobbes, De Homine, Letter Dedicatory.
127 Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.7.2.
128 See ibid., 2.7.2, 3.4.3, 3.10.1, 4, 4.I.1; Rousseau, Political Economy, par. 10; Rousseau, Considerations on the Government of Poland, 15.5, 7.
129 See Gourevitch, “The Religious Thought,” 213.
130 Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.7.2–3.
131 Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 46.
132 See Hobbes, Leviathan, 5.1–4; De Corpore, 1.2–3; De Homine, 10.3–5.
133 See Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.3.2–3, 2.10.1–2, 3.1.10–16, 3.3.7–8, 3.6.6, 3.9.4, 4.2.10–11.
134 Gierke, Natural Law, 112, 136, 306 (note 107); Gierke, Political Theory, 109–10, 132 (note 104), 182: “Rousseau makes the contract of union produce a social body vested with power over its members, which despite its artificial existence he often compares to the human body. … He works out his ‘individualistic collectivism’ all the more rigidly. … Rousseau’s sovereign State-personality remains nothing but the sum of the individuals present at any given moment.”
135 See Sorell, ed., Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, 45–61, 86–156; Bernardi and Bensaude-Vincent, “The Sciences in Rousseau’s Works.”
136 Rousseau, Genevan Manuscript, 1.2.9.
137 Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction.1.
138 Rousseau, Political Economy, par. 10.
139 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1.14–15; see also Preface to Narcissus, par. 23.
140 See Bobbio, Thomas Hobbes, 36; and for an excellent synopsis of this early-modern mentality, see Dewey, Democracy and Education, 97–102.
141 Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction.1.
142 Salisbury, Policraticus, 6.21.
143 Rousseau, Right of War, pars. 32–34.
144 Ibid.
145 I Corinthians 12:25, Colossians 3:15
146 Augustine, City of God, vol.7, 22.30.
147 See Shklar, Men and Citizens, 200–209; Hequembourg, “Tale of Two Bodies”; Robin Douglass, “Body Politic,” 139. Gierke also frequently cited Hobbes’s “soul” of the commonwealth (without commentary), as if it were self-evident proof of his rationalism. See Gierke, Natural Law, 61; Gierke, Political Theory, 176.
148 Hobbes, Leviathan, Latin Appendix, I.45–6, 55–6; see also Introduction.1, 6.1, 34.10, 38.4, 44.15.
149 See notes 55 and 64 above.
150 Hobbes, De Cive, 5.19. Rousseau in one instance followed the older usage, referring to sovereignty as the ‘head’ of the body politic, but he generally preferred the soul allusion as well: see Social Contract, 3.1.4; cf. Hobbes, Political Economy, par. 10.
151 Hobbes, Leviathan, 21.21, 42.125; see also 26.15, 29.23.
152 Rousseau, Social Contract, 3.11.3.
153 See Hobbes, De Corpore Politico, 24.3; Hobbes, De Cive, 10.3. See Rousseau, Political Economy, pars. 1–3, 6–7; Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.2.2–3, 1.4.5. Rousseau is most concerned about paternalism in a governmental ‘chief,’ not in the sovereign General Will; see Political Economy, par. 8; Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.5.1–2.
154 Hobbes, Leviathan, 20.5; see also 20.13–5, 30.11.
155 Rousseau, Social Contract, 24.1–2.
156 Ibid., 2.4.1.
157 Hobbes, Leviathan, 20.18.
158 Ibid., 24.1; see also 30.21; and, De Cive, 10.2,5.
159 Hobbes, Leviathan, 30.30; see also 17.6 and 24.7.
160 Rousseau, Political Economy, pars. 34–41. See also Rousseau, Leviathan, 30.1.
161 Rousseau, Political Economy, pars. 31–32. See also Social Contract, 1.6.5.
162 Constant highlighted this dynamic in Rousseau and in Molé (whom he claimed was following Hobbes): “In the same way as Rousseau maintains that the social body could not harm either the whole of its members or any of them in particular, this writer claims that the holder of power – the man constituted as society – cannot harm society itself, because any injury he caused to it he would suffer fully himself, since he himself is society.” (Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients,” 106 note 1). And for the relationship between all three thinkers, see Constant, Principles of Politics, 21–24.
163 Hobbes, Leviathan, 30.16; see also pars. 8–10 and 18.19.
164 See Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 46–49.
165 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, pars. 34–37.
166 Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.7.4; see also 2.4.5.
167 Rousseau, Political Economy, par. 36; see also par. 11.
168 Ibid., par. 11.
169 See note 95 above. See also Hobbes, Leviathan, 30.7. And for a parallel passage in Rousseau, see Social Contract, 2.2.2.
170 Hobbes, Leviathan, 29.1–2ff. For similar passages in Rousseau, see Social Contract, 2.9.3, 3.1.2, 3.4.7, 3.10.1, 3.11.2, 4.4.36, 4.8.8; and Political Economy, pars. 48–49.
171 Hobbes, Leviathan, 21.21, 24.1. See also Rousseau, Social Contract, 3.11.2.
172 See Hobbes, Leviathan, 17.12; Rousseau, Right of War, pars. 32–34.
173 Hobbes, Leviathan, 22.34. See also Rousseau, Political Economy, par. 16.
174 Rousseau, Social Contract, 3.11.3; see also 3.10.1.
175 See ibid., 1.6.1, 2.5.1–2.
176 Ibid., 4.1.1; see also 2.4.1.
177 Traditionalist monarchs (such as the British Stuarts) were among the few who continued to use the organic political analogy extensively, which only accelerated the growing sense that it was passé.
178 Constant, “Liberty of Ancients and Moderns,” 317–19.
179 See Rousseau, Social Contract, 4.3.10–4.7.8, 4.7.27.
180 See Hobbes, De Cive, 12.3; Leviathan, 21.8–9, 29.14, 31.41 (OL).
181 Much of this sense is delivered in the second half of Leviathan. But see 29.4, 42 (entire), 46.23 (OL), 47.21–22.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sarita Zaffini
Sarita Zaffini is currently a Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, USA.